Felis Cattus, is your taxonomic nomenclature, an endothermic quadruped carnivorous by nature. Your visual, olfactory, and auditory senses, contribute to your hunting skills and natural defenses.
I find myself intrigued by your subvocal oscillations, a singular development of cat communications, that obviates your basic hedonistic predilection, for a rhythmic stroking of your fur, to demonstrate affection.
A tail is quite essential for your acrobatic talents; you would not be so agile if you lacked its counterbalance. And when not being utilized to aide in locomotion, it often serves to illustrate the state of your emotion.
O Spot, the complex levels of behaviour you display connote a fairly well-developed cognitive array. And though you are not sentient, Spot, and do not comprehend, I nonetheless consider you a true and valued friend. — Ode to Spot by Lt Cmdr Data
T.S. Eliot put it best:
Dogs have masters; cats have staff.
Great picture, wonderful poem and…
Oops excuse me, gotta go. My mistress is meowing for me.
I hate the sci-fi usage of sentient to mean having some kind of advanced intelligence. This is not how the word has historically been used and is not how it is currently used in some branches of philosophy. In philosophy “sentient” means exactly what it sounds like; having sensations usually to an extent that we believe the animal has some kind of fairly complex internal representation of its world.
And there are better poems about cats anyway.
Good to see that old poem now and again. I’m… not sure where my Feline Overlord is, though I suspect she’s in the house, kicking the humans off the couch. (Or trying to.)